Featured Rob North Machines For Sale

Rob North trained in engineering at Alfred Herbert's machine tool factory in Coventry England. He began by modifying a Manx Norton frame, constructing a Triumph-engined sidecar racer. Fracture issues saw him change the top tubes at the steering head, he kept the top tubes above the down tubes, and subsequently kept this arrangement on his further designs. Triumph originally approached Ken Sprayson (for those of us who can remember Ken, welding broken frames at the TT for racers, working out of that small garage well behind the pits, and he did not charge anything), a welding genius. Ken Sprayson had to decline Doug Hele's request for Reynolds frames, as the deadline was too tight. Ken Sprayson did however, make a Reynolds frame for Percy Tait's 500 race machine. Rob North used T45 carbon manganese seamless cold drawn and certified for aviation. A distinctive feature of the frames is that they had smaller diameter tubing for the subframe. Frames for the Triumph Factory Triples were made in 2 forms. The 1970 frames had the oil cooler in front of the cylinders, the 1971 frames had the oil cooler in the fairing nose cone, to facilitate a lower frame. They are known as the lowboy and highboy. He also made fork yolks and wheel hubs to suit disc brakes. The frames were made for the Daytona Race Bikes, however to meet the busy race schedule, Bill Fannon a fitter (mainly racing) from Triumph's Experimental Department, was seconded to Rob North's workshop, initially operating out of a small workshop in Bedworth Coventry. Bill Fannon was given no drawings for the frames, just shown shapes he wanted and where to drill holes, he would then bend, cut and mitre tubing, Rob North would then braze the frames together. Rob North then moved premises to the old cinema near Nuneaton, Leicestershire. Rob North was paid £145 per frame. Bert Hopwood, Chief Engineer at Triumph, had approached Rob saying that a road-going frame in larger quantities may be required in much larger quantities, but a contract never materialised. Rob North then made a few semi-official race frames for individual riders. In his early days he made frames for friends, mostly for sidecar racing. 6 race team machines were shipped to America for the Daytona Race, 3 Triumph Trident engined blue and white bikes, and 3 red and white BSA bikes with the Rocket 3 engines, a 7th spare bike was for Percy Taite to ride. When testing one it reached 164 miles per hour, and what a feat, given this was in the early1970s. In 1973 he emigrated to America, initially he worked for Don Vesco, he also built frames for a BMW F750 racer for Butler and Smith who raced them. Rob North was unaware that a former business associate of his, Stuart Ashford allocated the rights to the triple design to Boyer of Bromley, who then passed the rights to Norman Miles and Micky Pearce, known for his welding talent. The rights have changed hands several times since then.
Norman Hyde, Triumph Development Engineer, went on to build the road-going Hyde Harrier, using a modernised roadgoing version of the Rob North racing frames, built by GPD Racing Developments, that took both the Hinckley Bonneville engine and the 3-cylinder Trident engine. Norman Hyde holds countless official FIM World Records for sidecars, including 350cc, 500cc, 750cc and 1000cc. If people are interested, I can post a little more of the history. There are numerous Rob North framed machines around in the UK and abroad, some have been lost in time, some are road-going and some are raced. Going back to the machine auctioned by Mecum Auctions and stating as one of Rob North’s personal bikes – the only street bike he ever built, the information was taken directly from the auction website, the machines were from Rob North's estate, entered by his sisters and paperwork. However, the information from Mecum Auctions may well be correct, in that the machine was fully built by Rob North himself, from the bare frame to the finished machine, that is an awful lot of individual components, without being pedantic, nor wishing to offend, if any machine is not 100% completed by the builder then it could not be said to be a fully completed bike, whether for road or race. Personally, I like to see these Rob North framed machines and really appreciate the work that went into them, and the same is true for the wonderful Rickman Framed ones. Keep any photos coming. Credit has to be given to Norman Hyde and Mick Duckworth for much of the information.